Study Kit

From relief to resilience Our region faces mild to mid range jolts of earthquake frequently and the recent shaking of Lahore with epicenter near Nankana Sahib indicate possibility of future seismic activity in Punjab.  Earthquake of 8th October 2005 that left 75,000 dead and 3.5 million homeless reminds us of how unprepared we were as government and as masses.  The …

As things stand, Pak-US interests in security and economic wellbeing are poised to diverge even further We have grown into the habit of conceiving political arena as if it were the extension of our social relationship. Every time, a high profile American official is on a visit to Pakistan, an exercise in déjà vu revisits: what we have been doing …

It is wondrous to think what Pakistan represented to the six and a half million people who migrated from India to what was then a newly-formed West Pakistan. As they left all their belongings, homes, families and legacies, and started off on a journey of thousands of miles on overladen oxcarts, trains filled with corpses, and on foot, they buried …

Pakistanis are quite sensitive to the plight of Muslims around the world. There is genuine outpouring of public sentiments against the mistreatment of Muslims in India, the genocidal level of violence being perpetrated against the Rohingya, and the longstanding plight of Palestinians in the Middle East. We also take strong exception to the rise of Islamophobia in the West and …

Michael Berdine’s succinct analysis of his subject Sykes’s political involvement in the Middle East is also a reflection that can be extended to the present-day turmoil in the region. “As a man of his time and class,” he writes, “Sir Mark Sykes was an imperialist driven more by ego and political considerations than humanitarian reasons.” His new book, Redrawing the …

Vagaries of Consciousness It’s not that bad The social media is abuzz with outlandish predictions of economic melt-down. A post attributed to former World Bank/IMF officials is particularly vicious, which reads like an apocalyptic scene: “the external deficit is so big that exchange rate would go down to Rs200 even with an IMF program; the country would face a situation …

As well as hitting Chinese exporters, the escalating US-China dispute will have an impact on many Asia-Pacific economies Aseries of decisions by the United States to impose trade tariffs on various key trade partners, including China, the European Union, India, Russia and the key NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) partners of Canada and Mexico, have catapulted the world toward …

The 10th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg has demonstrated that the group of five emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is placing even more emphasis on its partnership with Africa. Five years ago when the 5th BRICS Summit was held in Durban, South Africa, the theme was “BRICS and Africa”. Now it is “BRICS in Africa”, …

IN the run-up to elections both the PTI and PML-N claimed that they had achieved a lot in education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab respectively. And, to an extent, they were both right. There have been major reforms that have been carried out in the education systems in these provinces. But a few things should be clear. First, though a …

Are we moving towards a thirsty tomorrow? Independent studies and expert opinion have revealed that a country with an abundance of water resources is now on the verge of being severely affected by a water scarcity. South Asia has 1,500 million acre-feet (MAF) of the world’s share of fresh water supply. As the largest countries of South Asia, Pakistan and …